LSAT Study Tip: Teach It to Someone Else
There are several benefits to creating a study group: accountability, companionship, people to bounce things off of when you’re not sure you understand them. But there is another benefit that isn’t as obvious, and education writer Annie Murphy Paul writes about it in this week’s edition of her newsletter The Brilliant Report. Teaching others material actually helps you learn it better:
“Students enlisted to tutor others work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively. In a phenomenon that scientists have dubbed “the protégé effect,” student teachers score higher on tests than pupils who are learning only for their own sake … A pair of articles published in 2007 in the journals Science and Intelligence concluded that first-born children are more intelligent than their later-born brothers and sisters and suggested that their higher IQs result from the time they spend showing their younger siblings the ropes.”
Read the rest of the article if it interests you–she discusses some fascinating projects underway at several universities to harness this phenomenon. But when it comes to your LSAT preparation, this research presents a great opportunity to take your learning to the next level. Some ideas: 
1. Find a partner or group to study with, and teach other the material. Don’t just wait for confusion to arise naturally (I mean, you can, but why when you don’t have to?); design sessions around having to teach each other hard questions.
2. Teach your little brother, or the kids you babysit. Can’t find a study partner? Really challenge yourself by taking on the task of convincing a child in your life that you’re going to play a fun game called “lessons in logic.” This may be too hard.
3. Teach a parent. If (2) doesn’t work out, teach a loved one who is old enough to drive. When I was auditioning to teach for Manhattan LSAT, I practiced on my mom and was impressed with how quickly she learned the material–and how preparing to teach her forced me to learn the question inside and out. (She also was impressed with herself. At the end of our lesson she said, “Maybe I should go to law school!”).
Now when your teacher put you into groups and asks you to teach each another, you won’t be surprised. More importantly, you’ll know why.